Competitive advantage
Wal-Mart is a transnational company that deals with almost every kind of product in the world that is needed most by the society. Wal-Mart deals and operates mostly on hypermarkets, the grocery stores, and discounted stores all over the world and mostly in the American country. It holds one of the largest revenue collections in the world having yearly turnover sales of more than $450 billion dollars as of the financial year 2016 (Bidgoli, 2015). The greatest advantages that the company utilizes to gain competitive advantage are the fact that the firm has available resources and capabilities to its competitors. Using the VRIO (value, rarity, imitability, and organization) the physical resource that enhances product delivery at Wal-Mart stores can be greatly influenced to this framework.
The physical resource is one of the advantages that Wal-Mart stores use to its most capability in order to remain the best ever in the market. Information technology is a physical resource that has pushed the firm to the present occupation it is today (Williams, 2011). Wal-Mart has used information technology to exploit an external opportunity where customers prefer to shop indoors rather than visiting the stores thereby making the resource to retain the value compared to the competitors. Information technology as a value enhances in increasing the income of Wal-Mart since customer requirements are served first. Wal-Mart has over 11,000 stores worldwide and which needs effective coordination from the main offices located in the various countries they operate. Information technology plays an important role in ensuring that the firm stays at the peak always thereby ensuring that competition is minimized through this strategy.
Driving cost to lowest in the supply chain through information technology has been a success since the platform presents the lack of being there physically to sell or even advertise the goods. Selling goods online to the customers makes it even simpler for the customers to locate whatever they want in just seconds (Bidgoli, 2015). This strategy enables the customers to save on time and resources they would have actually used to physically obtain the goods from the stores which is not the case with all other firms using information technology therefore perfect competition. Information technology is rare and only those companies that have ample investments in the technology can have a better market share which firms such as Wal-Mart have utilized fully.
Use of information technology to lure customers into buying their products enhances on the profitability of the company. The world today is so diverse and dependent on technology and this is an indicator that the businesses that operate and offer their services online have an advantage over the competitors since the technology is rare to many (Williams, 2011). This is done through the websites where the customers are required to choose whatever specifications they require and order them online and delivery was done on time. Information technology being a valuable and also rare enhances the likeliness of the resource not being imitable to the competitors. Imitating product and services can be easy but this is not the case with Wal-Mart since their products are hardly imitated by competitors due to their uniqueness. For example, after the customer visits the company site, there is an option where the customer can interact with the firm and raise any issue about certain products and how to make the quality better. Such services are imitated by competitors without the knowledge and understanding that the firm has already the customer loyalty required. Customer interaction is an important feature in service delivery to the customers and it is one of the challenges facing the competing companies that deal in this same line of business (Williams, 2011).
In terms of organization, Wal-Mart has achieved full customer preference since the structural and the management strategy enhance customer service equally to customer demands. The supply chain stores that are opened all over the world enhance the profitability of the company and since the company has invested so much in information technology, it makes it even simpler to manage the stores from one main office. This also enhances the customer service delivery. Being a global supplier requires the firm to have able and ready suppliers who can meet the high demand that the customers require and therefore making the company a leading seller of products worldwide.
References
Williams, C. (2011). Management. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning.
Bidgoli, H. (2015). MIS6.
